Grant boosts audiologist's work on hearing improvement programme

Audiology PhD student Dona Jayakody has been awarded a grant from Phonak Hear the World Foundation to develop a music-based pitch perception training programme for the hearing-impaired.

Hear the World is an international initiative by Phonak that aims to raise awareness of the topic of hearing and hearing loss. Applications for funding are received internationally and are highly competitive, with a two-round consideration process.

“Being able to hear and appreciate music is such an important aspect to being a person — I can’t imagine not being able to listen to music and appreciate it,” Dona said. “It is such a big part of our lives and there is a lack of research in this area.”

Dona is looking at all aspects of pitch perception for those with hearing aids or cochlear implants. Often a hearing-impaired person finds it difficult to identify pitch changes, including not being able to determine instruments in an orchestra, recognise melodies, or emotion in a voice.

“Being able to identify the emotion in a voice, whether someone is scared, happy or sad is very important if, for example, you are on the telephone, or can’t see the speaker’s face,” she said.
“Pitch is also important in communication. Approximately 50 per cent of languages are tonal, which means those with poor pitch perception won’t be able to communicate as effectively in those languages.”

To help develop pitch perception skills in those with a significant hearing loss, Dona has developed a computer program that is used over a 10-week period with the aim of retraining the brain into hearing and perceiving pitch changes which help when listening to musical sounds and voice tones.

The computer program is in a DVD format and the listener completes the training at home on their own computer. Progressing from simple to difficult tasks, the program has an interactive format and an adaptive procedure so that the training is individualised for the trainee. It covers a large range of frequencies and uses live recordings of male and female sung vowels and a variety of musical instruments. There is also a written manual that accompanies the program.

“We are trying to reorganise the brain with exercises, like going to the gym,” she said.

Cochlear implants and hearing aids process the sound heard by the wearer and, in combination with the person’s hearing loss, these factors have been shown to have detrimental effects on pitch perception accuracy.

The $8000 grant from the Hear the World Foundation will be spent on developing and producing the DVDs that will be given to a research group. Sixty subjects in the research group will listen to and follow the exercises three to four times a week for 30 minutes over a 10-week period.

The impetus for Dona’s research came when she was working with young children with cochlear implants at Durdans Hospital in Sri Lanka. Dona was disheartened when she saw young children unable to hear the rhyming in nursery rhymes and decided to do something about it. She decided to research how children with cochlear implants process the sounds in nursery rhymes, which has led her to a PhD at Canterbury.

“When I looked at enrolling in a PhD, Canterbury offered exactly what I was looking for. It’s all about trying to improve someone’s quality of life. Every day doing this work gives me a big smile,” she said.